How to Nurse a Toddler and Infant Simultaneously

When you breastfeed more than one child, you are tandem breastfeeding or nursing. Tandem nursing applies to breastfeeding multiples and it also applies to breastfeeding a baby and a toddler together. There may be times when both the baby and the toddler need to nurse at the same time. In this situation, you would feed both children simultaneously. The process can be somewhat challenging, but practice should help you become adept at tandem nursing.

Things You'll Need

  • Pillows

Instructions

    • 1

      Situate yourself in a comfortable recliner, on the couch or in bed. Place pillows around you to support your back, upper body and arms. You will need more pillows for support in bed than you will if you sit in a recliner or on the couch. Optimally, the pillows should provide sufficient support to eliminate all stress in your upper body while you hold both children to breastfeed.

    • 2

      Position the baby first at one breast. One option for positioning is the football hold, in which you hold your baby̵7;s head in your hand and tuck his feet between your arm and your body. The football hold works well with newborns. Another breastfeeding position involves the cradle hold with your baby lying horizontal in one arm, latched to a breast.

    • 3

      Settle your toddler in place at the other breast after you situate the baby. You might place the toddler in a cradle hold also, with the baby resting partially on the toddler, advises international board certified lactation consultant Kelly Bonyata, with the KellyMom website. Your toddler could also snuggle beside you, facing you, with her legs extended out to the side away from you.

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